Emily Anderson, former Cyber Security Engineer

Ethereum mining is profitable. Anything that is linked with Ethereum is profitable, such as trading, investing, buying and selling.

It order to mine Ethereum in an efficient manner you’ll need to keep the following things in mind:

Make sure you use high powered graphics.
Make sure the hash rate is high.
Join the top mining pool.
Make sure the electrical consumption is less.
Mine only when the difficulty level is low or average.

Andrew Shini

Answered Jul. 1, 2017

Simple answer? NO!

If you don’t know, in depth, how cryptocurrencies work, then do not buy mining equipment.

If you want to use your CPU or graphics card, then go ahead. But do not spend thousands of dollars on mining equipment.

Just buy the cryptocurrency. Invest that money wisely. Look at the historical prices and just buy when the cycle looks low. Even if you buy too high and prices fall in the short term, just don’t sell. Consider this money gone and don’t touch it. Fast forward to year 2030, if you own 2 bitcoins, you’d be a millionaire now (according to forecasts).

Tina Mailhot-Roberge

Bart Bieniek, Trader and Crypto Enthusiast (2016-present)

Updated Jun. 18, 2018

If you want to mine cryptocurrency, nothing can stop you, but please keep in mind that right now it is significantly harder to do so and your profitability will depend on many factors like cost of the rig, electricity and if you sell or hold on to your tokens.

Is there any cryptocurrency where mining is profitable? Most answers you will get are ‘No, do not mine’. If you had asked this question one, two, three or four years ago, you would get the same answer: ‘No, do not mine’. You see where all this is going?

The thing is, anyone who was mining before and kept the coins/tokens made a lot of money. Will that happen in future? That is the risk. And where there is risk, there is reward.

It is common knowledge that crypto markets tend to operate in cycles.

People are disappointed and will tell you not to mine. Those are the same people who were blinded by huge returns and paid for the rigs 150 percent plus MSRP without any research. Right now the prices are back to normal and you can easily buy a plug-and-play professional rig without any problems.

If you are totally new to crypto and want to extend your knowledge, consider joining EnhancedInvestor, a community that brings together the best analysts, provides great calls and amazing materials for you to learn from.

Min Park, Blockchain Marketing Consulting

Answered Nov. 18, 2017

Yes, though don’t expect to become a millionaire from mining. Profitable in this case means to make a bit of money.

As you know it, Bitcoin is not profitable for average miners anymore. The most mining-friendly cryptocoins in 2017–2018 are the following:

Ethereum is in the gray zone, as ETH mining profitability is decreasing now.

Dash would have been a great choice since mining remains accessible for everyone while its price showed a significant growth – in mid-November 2017, Dash increased from around $350 to over $500, and then had a correction. Cryptocoins are getting more attention, and it has great potential in the future.

However, it seems that Dash is also entering that zone when mining is becoming accessible only for those who can buy ASIC equipment.

Litecoin is a favorite for many altcoin miners. It can still be mined with regular home PC.

Ethereum and Ethereum Classic also show great return – with the same 50 MH/s hashing power, ETC provides over 650 percent profitability per day, which translates into around $80 per month. If you buy more GPU, you can make good profit from ETC mining.

Also, don’t forget there is Bitcoin Gold. This is new after-fork coin that appeared particularly because the Bitcoin community wanted something mining-friendly. They said Bitcoin market was monopolized and the average person cannot profit from it, which is true. Today, BTG can be mined with regular graphic cards. However, make sure to check BTG price. If it keeps above $100, then it’s good for you.

Shubham Davey, Founder at Btricks

Answered Jan. 16, 2018

Mining cryptocurrency is fruitful, no matter which one you choose. It depends on your efforts and energy consumed to decide your returns. Bitcoin is the classic example for this. What you put in as effort and energy may not return as profits to you.

Day by day, the difficulty of mining keeps increasing. This means it takes more and more time to mine those currencies. A group of miners (mining pool) work for 9–10 hours a day and this teamwork may get the group 1 BTC or less. As the difficulty keeps increasing, the return will keep decreasing. What you earn may not be profitable in terms of your efforts and energy.

Considering all this, Bitcoin is not the best to mine right now as a individual. Bitcoin mining requires a huge investment. Ethereum and Litecoin are doing really well in the market. There are platforms that let you mine multiple cryptocurrencies at a time.

Elliander Eldridge, Bitcoin Miner

Answered Jan. 17, 2017

Unfortunately, that depends on a number of factors which would ultimately make the answer different depending on who you are.

The most notable factor is the equipment you have and the type of coin you are mining. To give an example, some of my equipment returns more with Bitcoin than Litecoin, and some is the other way around.

Some mining systems try to solve this by mining in whatever coin is more profitable at that time, but they don’t give payouts in just one preferred coin so you have to try converting yourself and for many coins and users this is easier said than done, so you have to factor that in, especially the exchange cost.

Personally, I tend to avoid newer coins, unless it’s solving a specific problem other coins don’t address. For example, I backed Namecoin early because it addresses an actual problem and can be mined with the same work as Bitcoin.

Some cryptocurrencies arise purely to prey on people by giving a dev an unfair advantage in first rewards, and these rarely last long. Of course, people often want the higher returns that can come with being on the ground floor of a coin. If you mined Bitcoin when it was new with a standard PC and held it, you’d be in the millions today. Of course, that also means high risk.

Chip Smith, studied Blockchain Expert at Harvard-Westlake School

Answered Aug. 4, 2017

Yes, I have a friend doing five figures a month.

They said in the gold rush, the gold diggers did ok, but the shops that sold shovels were the ones who cleaned up. Supply and demand is key, and right now companies are doing millions of dollars in profits selling videos cards and computer equipment that the miners who mine Bitcoin are using. That would be the equivalent to people who made off with huge profits selling shovels to the gold miners back in the day.

That is where huge money can be made.

Betsey Sale

Answered Dec. 8, 2017

Yes, there are plenty of mining cryptocurrencies which are profitable in 2017. Many cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Zcash, Dash and various others altcoins are becoming more and more popular these days.

According to me, Litecoin Mining is still profitable. Litecoin uses a proof-of-work function to verify each and every transaction, recording transactions on the blockchain system, with each set of transactions forming a new block.

Some important factors that prove Litecoin mining’s profitability include:

1. Hardware Efficiency

2. Low Hardware Hash Power

3. Low Electricity cost.

In addition to mining cryptocurrency, Litecoin mining calculators play an important role in mining Litecoin effectively in a simple and secure way.

Jenny Delgado, former Web Hosting Market Analyst

Answered Mar. 5, 2018

Yes. Mining is the procedure by which exchanges of digital forms of money are secured. For this reason, the miners do scientific calculations for the system with their PC hardware. As a reward for their services, they are rewarded with the recently created coins, and in addition the expenses related with the exchanges they affirm. In this sense, miners are competing and their earnings are relative to the processing power they convey.

Litecoin is a favorite for many altcoin miners. It can still be mined with a regular home PC.

Dash would have been a great choice since mining remains accessible for everyone while its price showed significant growth.

Mining has developed from a modest bunch of early enthusiasts into a specialized industrial-level venture. The easy income was scooped out previously and what remains is covered under the cryptographic equivalent of tons of hard rock.

Balazs Deme, Founder of Herdius

Answered Jan. 12, 2014

Yes of course. There is scrypt mining – instead of ASIC you use your graphics card to mine. Check out Coinwarz, a profitability calculator for altcoins. With a $1,500 investment in hardware you can easily make $25/day after electricity costs.

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